After the Affair

Cheating happens more often than you might think. How do couples get past it?

Sam and Mari had been married for two years when Mari learned Sam was having an affair with a co-worker. Sam was working incredibly long hours in his job as a first year law associate at a very large firm. In their rare moments of quiet at home, Mari noticed Sam seemed increasingly distracted and she felt he was acting oddly secretive.

When Sam was in the shower one morning, Mari grabbed his cell phone and looked at his text messages. In less than 10 seconds, her life had changed and what she saw struck her like a hammer between the eyes: I am going to screw you like there’s no tomorrow. From Sam to Molly. From her husband to another attorney. A woman who had been in Mari’s apartment just two weeks before.

The rest of the evidence was easy to find, and it was clear as day on Facebook and in his email as well that Sam was in deep with Molly. Not only was he sleeping with her, but he appeared to be in love with her.

On top of this all, Mari was six months pregnant with their first child.

This was the basic information I learned when Sam and Mari arrived for couple therapy with me. Mari wanted desperately to save their marriage, but was understandably shell-shocked. “I really don’t know what I want right now,” she told me when we first met. “All this stress is terrible for the baby, I do know that much.”

Sam was equally distraught in his own way. He admitted in front of Mari to being in love with Molly. Molly understood him in a way that Mari never did, he said, and he felt he had no choice but to pursue his feelings for her.

In her defense, Mari expressed some of the very best words I have ever heard in a therapy. It went something like this:

“You’re so full of shit it’s unbelievable. You let yourself fall in love with her because you’re bored with your miserable existence as a lawyer and she shines a giant spotlight on your sad little ego. Your bosses beat on you, and I demand things of you because I am your wife and we have a real life together. What you have with Molly is an escape. It’s pure fantasy… fiction….and you can’t think straight because the hormones connecting your dick and your head have taken over your brain. Wake up.”

Almost everything Mari had to say was the truth, and I love it when my clients can articulate their thoughts and feelings so brilliantly! In many ways, her statement captured truths that define nearly all extra-marital affairs. If only it would wake Sam up, my work would be done. Alas, our therapy was just beginning.